Private practice is dying. Meroka can save it.
Our latest real world AI company
Private practice is the best way to run healthcare. Fact: patients get better care, providers make more money and have more autonomy, and insurers spend less on care when doctors are in charge.
But private practice is dying. It’s impossible for independents to compete with scaled players; they have no leverage, can’t participate in innovative contracts, don’t reap the full benefits from technology, and have no one to take over as older doctors retire.
There is massive potential for AI to benefit healthcare operations, provider earnings, and patient care. But because private practice is in such a structural crisis, it can’t invest in or adopt AI well. Software won’t fix this and without intervention AI will just accelerate more consolidation.
To future-proof our healthcare system we need infrastructure for generational transition of practices. Without a platform and capital structure for practice transitions to and takeovers by younger doctors, the only options are to shut down or sell. And until that infrastructure exists, the window for medical entrepreneurship just keeps shrinking.
Private equity is swallowing medicine and killing American healthcare. We’re all suffering for it.
Meroka is on a mission to change that by powering generational transitions, technology transformation, and economic independence for private practice.
The company is bringing liquidity to practice owners through an ownership trust - transitioning practices to employee ownership and permanent independence from the clutches of private equity. Practices that partner with Meroka will be employee owned forever.
Meroka is an MSO for its practice network, bringing the benefits of scale: better technology, negotiating power, and network effects across the distributed system. Doctors will make more money as OWNERS and will be free to provide the care patients deserve without interference from PE overlords.
Eventually, you can imagine Meroka replacing more and more of the outsourced services with its own AI and acting as a single point of entry/orchestration for dozens of point solutions. The business can get into contracting and payments to enable small practices to participate in value based contracts on equal footing and do care navigation across the network. Meroka can break the binary between independence and sophistication.
We are proud to have led the pre-seed and doubled down alongside BTV to co-lead the seed round, with participation from 8VC and angels. BTV are fantastic partners here and we’re so stoked to work with them as we support Meroka. Meroka has raised $6 million in equity.
We backed Alex and Reza from formation and are deep believers in them and their mission. They have become healthcare and capital structure experts in record time because they are exceptionally principled thinkers and wildly talented operators. They’ve been heads down building this for nearly two years. It’s an immensely complex, important opportunity.
In conjunction with the seed round, Meroka has closed on its first transactions with its first cohort of women’s health/OBGYN practices, ensuring that they stay doctor-owned in perpetuity and can take full advantage of AI to improve patient care and clinic operations.
This is a great win for the providers, staff, and patients; and it’s an early, historic milestone for the American health system. Strap in.
You can read more about Meroka in Forbes, Crain’s, and on this podcast I did with Alex where we discuss Meroka in a ton of detail. Finally, you can read our private practice thesis here.
FAQ
Is Meroka a private equity fund/roll up platform?
No. Meroka is not buying practices itself. It is facilitating their acquisition by the doctor-owned structure ensuring that they will be owned by providers, not by PE or a hospital. Meroka is a financial services and software vendor, not a holding company. Think of it like an op co/prop co structure but the prop-co is employee owned. Weird!
So what is the business model? How the hell do they make money?
Meroka serves as an MSO to the network practices and is an administrator for the employee equity pool. They bring technology and services to help modernize the practices (accounting, RCM, credentialing, etc.), provide scale (the practices can negotiate together) and administer the employee stock option plan (think Carta), and do some staffing. Over time, they’ll replace more of the tech stack with their own products and also repackage products from others into a single operating system.
Are they hiring?
Yes! Meroka is hiring across the board. Jobs posted here.